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Annual Summit New York 2026

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Converging Worlds: How Natural and Digital Assets Are Shaping the Global Financial System

Global Economy & Trade

Hanne LeCount, Peter Knez

Session Summary

Important
Quotations

"It's not bad behavior; it's bad economics. There's a market failure in the sense that the benefits, the goods and services generated by these ecosystems, are not captured by the owners."

Peter Knez

Key
Takeaways

Market Failures Drive Environmental Degradation: The discussion revealed that environmental destruction is fundamentally an economic problem, not just a behavioral one. As one speaker noted, “trees being cut down for a dollar… it’s not bad behavior, it’s bad economics” because there’s a “market failure in the sense that the benefits, the goods and services generated by those ecosystems are not captured by the owners.”

Capitalism Must Be Part of the Sustainability Solution: A central theme emerged that “for sustainability to be sustainable, it has to be profitable” 1. The panelists emphasized that solving climate challenges requires getting “capitalism involved in the solution to sustainability” and engaging the “broad investor community” to mobilize the “hundreds of billions, trillions of dollars” needed.

Technology Enables New Asset Classes: Rapid improvements in sensor and imaging technology are making it possible to “measure and quantify using sensors… the ecological edge.” This technological revolution, combined with AI and compute advances, is enabling the emergence of nature-based assets as entirely new asset classes that could be “bigger than any asset classes” currently existing.

Multi-Stakeholder Approach is Essential: Success requires bringing together “technology, partnered with the governments, partnered with the local communities to actually capture and fix the market failure.” Without alignment between government, NGOs, private sector, and technology, the panelists argued the sustainability challenge is “not a solvable problem.”

Scale Must Match Nature’s Requirements: The discussion emphasized operating at “Mother Nature Scale, not homo sapien scale,” requiring the ability to tokenize “10 million hectares” rather than small pilot projects. This massive scale is necessary to meet the urgency of climate demands.

Action
Items

Immediate Actions: Develop standardized measurement frameworks for quantifying ecosystem services like carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and water purification; create pilot regulatory sandboxes where nature-based assets can be tested and refined before full market deployment; and establish multi-stakeholder working groups including technology companies, governments, local communities, and investors.

Medium-term Initiatives: Invest in sensor and monitoring infrastructure to enable real-time data collection from ecosystems at scale; develop rating and regulatory frameworks for nature-based assets to provide investor confidence and market stability; and create educational programs to address misconceptions about the profitability and viability of sustainable investments.

Long-term Strategic Goals: Build integrated technology platforms capable of operating at the scale of millions of hectares rather than small demonstration projects; establish international cooperation frameworks to enable cross-border nature-based asset markets; and develop financial instruments that properly capture and monetize the full value of ecosystem services.

Addressing Common Misconceptions: Counter the false choice narrative between economic growth and environmental protection by demonstrating profitable sustainability models; show concrete ROI examples from existing nature-based asset projects to prove viability to skeptical investors; and highlight market opportunities rather than focusing solely on regulatory compliance or ethical imperatives.